Liberty in BNW

[Qarthadast]

Since BNW I feel completely incapable playing liberty (Immortal).

I tried it out with the Portuguese on a Terra map and had a quite good starting position with 3 different luxury resources next to my territory (--> in total 5 different luxury resources) but after 150 turns I still have just 5 cities which aren't very big additionally (13 - 9 - 7 - 6 - 4), and although I have Notre Dame my happy cap is strained hard...

So can sbd give me some hints and tips what to build at the beginning, when to build settlers and how to manage the happy cap with the aim of having 10 cities with 7+ population after 200 turns on standard game speed (respectively 300 on epic)?

btw aim is technological victory

 

[black213]

In my opinion Liberty hasn't been as good as Tradition ever since G&K... the variety of luxury resources near your start isn't as great as it was in vanilla.

 

[atahop]

So far in BNW I have been using trade deals to trade lux for lux, and allying cs for happiness, but you are Portugal, so if you get lots of fetrorias (spelling?) up, that will help with the happiness

 

[Qarthadast]

But Feitorias are definitely too late. Even if I get Navigation fast it's not early enough too fulfill my aim of 10 medium sized cities...

 

[Matthew.]

Huh. So far I've found Liberty to be better in BNW than G&K. The strategy is the same as it has always been: Hook up early luxuries ASAP.

I'm typically at 6-8 cities by ~T115. From there it is dependent on the map.

 

[bradeh]

I've had mixed results so far.

 

[Kingjester1]

If a lot of your neighbors are going Tradition and they aren't super close, going Liberty can net you 6-8 cities easily, esp. if you have a strong religion presence and can buy happiness buildings with faith. This very strong because you can quickly ramp up those cities in size as your tech progresses.

If you are near to your neighbors or have a very aggressive civ that is likely to attack you, Tradition is a much better choice since you'll likely have less cities overall before going to war. By the time you get past 4 cities via a war you will want to start investing into social policies other than Liberty.

As for playing the Liberty opening, since Workers are cheaper and the social policy for the free Worker is easier to get to, I actually rush the policy for the free Settler. Going Opener -> Republic -> Collective rule while building Scout -> Monument -> Worker in the capital and teching the best available worker tech has been really good to me so far. This gets you the border expands for your initial resources/luxuries while having a Worker in time to improve them. The key after this is to focus on Settlers, Workers, and Warriors/Archers and keeping your cities size limited. You want to get the cities you can as fast as possible so they can start to have an impact faster. New cities generally build Archers and Monuments to start, then high production sites produce some additional workers and/or work boats as needed. After that it's all dependent on what you have available, focus on the growth and happiness buildings first though.

Liberty is all about giving up early strong cities for more weaker cities that through the mid game became very strong. Liberty works really well with pantheons that give bonuses for some resource you have in abundance as it makes working each of those improved tiles that much better.

 

[PDMX]

Here is a link to the G&K Liberty Opening Strategy:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=488275

I am currently experimenting with this.

 

[NoPartials]

I have actually had huge success with Liberty in BNW where I never used it in G&K. With having to get the early trade routes, it allows you to set up your economy without having to worry about building a worker or your second settler. A huge help in establishing an early empire i think.

 

[nanomage]

I too think that Liberty has become more viable in BNW, but my impression was that it's mostly because of AIs' expansion having been significantly toned down. They either can't cityspam as madly as they did before, or they no longer want to. With that in mind, you now have much more place to expand yourself, making Liberty better.

 

[chazzycat]

interesting, I've had good success with liberty in BNW. The AI seems to expand slower so you can take advantage with some quick expansion of your own. I've been doing 4 city NC and then expand to 2-3 more cities right after NC. Having 7+ cities later in the game really helps, you'll get a lot more antiquity sites with more territory. And since culture victory doesn't rely on policies anymore, it doesn't remove a VC just by expanding.

 

[playshogi]

Why so many cities? Each one is a penalty to science even puppeted ones. How much science does each additional city need to produce to overcome the penalty?

 

[chazzycat]

The penalty to science is not that big...good cities that will eventually grow into "core" cities generally will more than make up for the penalty if they are settled relatively early. It's the crappy little cities that won't grow, including puppets, that will hurt you.

 

[Hieschen]

I am very much on the fence here ftm and torn between liberty and tradition.
Toyed a bit with Piety and i am not convinced as a first choice / opening tree. Will explore this a bit more through the 2 challenges posted once Mac will be able to load PC save games.

In favour of liberty is clearly the left side of the tree, +1 prod and then the settler for free is very strong. Also the ability to build the 2nd settler rather quickly. Getting the free worker rather shortly after the 3rd city is a huge plus also as it gives you breathing room in the building chain of the cap. The 2 next policies are sub par with a GA which comes to early to have an impact with the nerved gold production on river tiles and the one giving happiness for connecting to the cap, well was never that strong when it came up for choice. Finisher is awesome.

I did not go above the 3rd city in any of my BNW games ftm >> mix of neighbours settling aggro when there were nice spots, sub par spots in other tries and i am a bit reluctant to settle cities which might drag the empire down due to increased policy and science cost.

Now this reasoning leads directly to tradition and i do still thing that tradition is rather strong, even improved on BNW due to 2 main observations:

a) AI settles overall slower, so the need to rush settlers as you compete for the spots is toned down
b) weaker gold economy makes it harder to find decent trading partners for luxuries (i am extremely reluctant to trade for 3/4 gpt for the lack of a better deal to be had) and so you keep yours more, so happiness increases. As a consequence my 3rd policy is no longer the one which boosts happiness but the one granting prod bonus for wonders.

Which leaves the remaining 2 policies were the happy boost is very nice due to the size of the capital when you may chose it (8 resp 9 in the 2 games were i played tradition). The last one is underwhelming and the finisher is very mighty, as it often comes before you tech the aqueduct. Tradition opening HG is a nice touch too, as in a tradition game i generally have more prod available to build wonders.

Observation were done on Immortal / Emperor

 

[killmeplease]

tech penalty is 5% (standard map size) to tech cost per every additional city.
if your capital produces say 100 beakers, 5% is only 5 beakers which every sity can provide no matter how crappy it is.

 

[Justice1337]

People are missing a lot of key topics, and without them the conversation isn't going to make any sense.

First, there's a big difference between Liberty opening 3 cities and Liberty founding 6+ cities by turn 80. One will have problems that the other will not, and vice versa.

Also, BNW brought food/hammer Caravans. So the benefits of cities and how fast they can get off the ground aren't tied nearly as closely with the turn you found them anymore. There's an old assumption that cities are being founded as soon as possible, but that doesn't hold anymore because it's not clear that that's optimal. People have to discuss what turn their cities are going down and what their trade networks look like before comparing starts.

The same timing-sensitive analysis needs to be had for the tech rate hits. If you do manage to get 4-cities by Turn 50 right now, it's not without growth-stifling happiness, because it never was. So on the one hand, you'll have 15% higher tech costs starting then, which leads to more lost beakers than when founding cities later. And on top of that, you'll stay at low populations for a long time because of unhappiness, so you can't get your cities beaker-profitable quickly after founding, like you could if you'd waited until T80 and sent a Food Ship. So sure, every point on the map might be worth settling eventually, because any given city will eventually produce more than 5% of your empire's tech yield. But the question is when you want to settle them, and because hitting Education by T120 is so important, you're not necessarily doing yourself a favor by extending your tech costs so soon.



See, the founding turn isn't the single determining variable on city strength anymore. And this throws a huge wrench into the calculus, because Liberty and Tradition each give the same raw inputs - (hammers, culture, happiness) - only at different times. Of the two, Liberty was always the tree that gave more happiness, hammers and culture through the long of the game. But Tradition was in a niche where it was better for empires 4 cities or less up until the late turn 100's, by which point most games were decided. The question of one versus the other was always one of timing, and there are entirely new timings to be considered with regards to city founding.

 

[Tabarnak]

See, the founding turn isn't the single determining variable on city strength anymore. And this throws a huge wrench into the calculus, because Liberty and Tradition each give the same raw inputs - (hammers, culture, happiness) - only at different times. Of the two, Liberty was always the tree that gave more happiness, hammers and culture through the long of the game. But Tradition was in a niche where it was better for empires 4 cities or less up until the late turn 100's, by which point most games were decided. The question of one versus the other was always one of timing, and there are entirely new timings to be considered with regards to city founding.

Completely agree. I just want to add 1 thing :

Liberty will always be favored for the first 100 turns. Fast domination, fast land grabbing or everything with the word ''fast'' will favourise Liberty. But , under a long term view, there is games where Tradition will beat Liberty, simply because this tree really shines between the turn 100 and 160 compared to Liberty where it shines more between 50 and 100. From 150+ turns with more or less same amount of cities the Trad tree will beat Liberty most of the time. This also explains why veteran players use Liberty for domination games and almost only that.


Ther Trad finisher is the bread and butter of tall empires, which often appear around the turn 100. That said, this is why the Trad tree will neat better science output for the post 150 turns games but the player needs to tweak and play his game like a veteran to see the difference.

 

[killmeplease]

because any given city will eventually produce more than 5% of your empire's tech yield.

is this accurate? i mean, the formula
i was told penalty is applied to the base tech cost not the final cost
so a new city should produce more beakers than 5/(100+perv_penalty)*science
e.g. when you found a 4th city (after the capital) and your current science is 100 the city should produce 5/(100+15)*100=4.35 beakers to compensate the penalty, and what is above makes profit

 

[JibJabberJab]

I just feel that since bnw, opening liberty simply makes very little sense, mainly because it absolutely trashes your economy and midgame science output (when compared to trad that is.)

Tradition gives you:
1gpt/2capitalpop (and gives you the means to grow your capital MUCH faster then with lib.)
4gpt saved on culture buildings (hammers too, but lib makes up for this with +1p/c)
4gpt saved on aqueducts
x gpt saved on unit maintenance (stick them in your cities and they are free).

Lib gives you exactly 0 gpt.

Tradition also gives you happiness without having to connect your cities with roads (you don't want to do that for quite a while or you lose even more gpt with liberty and your workers could be doing other useful things)

You also have to hardbuild your momuments and aqueducts(tech these) with liberty and pay maintenance for them.

The fast border growth also is a huge factor, lib cities borders grow frustratingly slow.

The one advantage lib has over trad is the blazing start with the fast 4+ cities -> build oracle to finish liberty > use GE on national college start. But even if you time this perfectly, tradition starts overtaking liberty again soon.

Also i don't see the point in spamming settlers, you get hit with a science and culture penalty for every city you found, and happiness already has major problems keeping up with 3-4 cities worth of caravan-fueled growth.
You simply can't support more cities unless you volutarily hamper your cities growth.

I thought tradition was a lot better then liberty in g&k and with bnw the advantage tradition has over lib has only grown much larger (yes, it's harder to get settlers out for tradition, but the food caravans make up for this 10 times over).

 

[Justice1337]

Liberty's mid to late game advantage always came from the extra hammers via Republic, the extra culture from Representation, and the increased happiness from Meritocracy over Monarchy. Especially the Culture and the Hammers are significantly better later on. Tradition does have the advantage of about 10-12 Gold per turn and that flat Growth bonus though.

Overall, I think the two trees are closer than they once were in G&K, if only because empire sizes of the two are very similar now and both openings are hard-building Settlers.